The Life that Once Was
by MortifiedMelancholia
Summary: Watari is a wealthy man. He believes himself to be content with his life, until a certain shadow of a juvenile genius appears, cold and afraid, on his doorstep one rainy 'noon.


Quillsh Wammy, or Watari as he became more commonly known to his few acquaintances later in life, had been a wealthy man.

To be wealthy in England was to resign yourself to stately homes and pastel shades, a quiet life within some rural glade or minutely-populated side-street, where the realities of existence outside of your own lay locked up and out of sight. Indeed, this was a preference that Watari had willingly committed himself to in his old age.

What had been less anticipated, however, was for this gentle illusion of grandeur to be so inexplicably disrupted one wet afternoon, as the man opened the manor's – and soon to be orphanage's – steel, uninviting fortifications (which somehow managed to pose as gates), only to find a wide-eyed infant standing in their wake.

Watari had never fathered a child. In fact, even the mere concept of childcare had been abhorrent to him for a significant part of his life, but this abandoned, presumably orphaned child at his doorstep had evoked in him the long-buried emotion of pity, a particular – and peculiar - sensation which he found he had not experienced for a considerable time. Whether his eyes were drawn to the bare feet, the meagre clothes or the icy grey-blue orbs that stared back into his very own, a hypnotising void that lay hidden within it the greatest intellect of perhaps any generation, Watari had undeniably sympathised. For this moment in time, the infantile shadow of a shivering, bitterly cold child had appeared more human to him than any person he had yet encountered. Within an instant, the oak doors had been opened in greeting, a silent invitation to the ever-sought comforts of home.

In what had seemed like sheer minutes following the boy's arrival, the aforementioned pastel colours and vintages of wealth had been crudely painted over by a wave, a near-tangible _atmosphere_ , of monochrome. Be it a tuft of jet black hair, or a glimpse of white fabric, the presence was undeniable. Watari was soon to find that the marks left by this boy were irreversible, the juvenile fingerprints stamping themselves across the man's heart and eventually across the world's most authoritative law enforcement positions. The residence's former warm, mild shades had been bluntly and unexpectedly replaced by cold, unforgiving, calculating base colours. Strangely, Watari found himself favouring this – most definitely, this ghost of a boy was a presence that had changed his life for the better.

To think that it could all have dissipated so quickly, in a flash of red.

Red, the colour of a revolution, an uprising, a rebellion. Although, in all fairness, it had appeared as more of a mutiny or riot through the boy's eyes. Perhaps "boy" had been a outlandish selection of words for, in fact, the former child now stood – albeit with a somewhat questionable gait – for the most respected of police forces. Some believed he was truly the most magnificent detective the world had yet seen, and Watari could not help himself but agree. Constantly in pursuit of the small details, the finer pieces which are always essential to complete the puzzle, the detective had picked up on this scarlet façade, posing itself as divine justice, in an instant.

Crimson, the colour that Watari swore he had seen flash in the suspect's eyes when his adopted son had told the man his suspicions, straight to his face in an act of blatant defiance and bravery. Oh, how Watari waited, so patiently, for the jingle of closing handcuffs, the thud of a prison gate, the sound of a conviction, the roar of a guilty verdict. He had never expected to hear anything else.

Ruby, the colour of the single button that would erase all police data for the greater good. The button that Watari had gone to such extreme moral and physical exertion, only to press once.

Just like the infant he had discovered upon his doorstep so many years past, he found himself terrified, and predictably so; confused, nervous, hesitant, tentative, faltering. But above all else, he found himself in awe of what the child – _his boy, his son_ – had become. Gazing back to those foreboding screens, seeing those eyes once more, the same, wide, hypnotic eyes of a lonely child worn by the trials of adulthood and sleep deprivation, he was in unquestionable admiration.

To think that it was all over, and so quickly too.

It could not be described in another form.

Quillsh Wammy, or Watari as he had become more commonly known to his few acquaintances later in life, was _proud._


End file.
